In May 1958, and four years into the Algerian War of Independence, a revolt again appropriated the revolutionary and republican symbolism of the French Revolution by seizing power through a Committee of Public Safety. This book explores why a repressive colonial system that had for over a century maintained the material and intellectual backwardness of Algerian women now turned to an extensive programme of 'emancipation'. After a brief background sketch of the situation of Algerian women during the post-war decade, it discusses the various factors contributed to the emergence of the first significant women's organisations in the main urban centres. It was only after the outbreak of the rebellion in 1954 and the arrival of many hundreds of wives of army officers that the model of female interventionism became dramatically activated. The French military intervention in Algeria during 1954-1962 derived its force from the Orientalist current in European colonialism and also seemed to foreshadow the revival of global Islamophobia after 1979 and the eventual moves to 'liberate' Muslim societies by US-led neo-imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the women of Bordj Okhriss, as throughout Algeria, the French army represented a dangerous and powerful force associated with mass destruction, brutality and rape. The central contradiction facing the mobile socio-medical teams teams was how to gain the trust of Algerian women and to bring them social progress and emancipation when they themselves were part of an army that had destroyed their villages and driven them into refugee camps.
By expanding the geographical scope of the history of violence and war, this volume challenges both Western and state-centric narratives of the decline of violence and its relationship to modernity. It highlights instead similarities across early modernity in terms of representations, legitimations, applications of, and motivations for violence. It seeks to integrate methodologies of the study of violence into the history of war, thereby extending the historical significance of both fields of research. Thirteen case studies outline the myriad ways in which large-scale violence was understood and used by states and non-state actors throughout the early modern period across Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Atlantic, and Europe, demonstrating that it was far more complex than would be suggested by simple narratives of conquest and resistance. Moreover, key features of imperial violence apply equally to large-scale violence within societies. As the authors argue, violence was a continuum, ranging from small-scale, local actions to full-blown war. The latter was privileged legally and increasingly associated with states during early modernity, but its legitimacy was frequently contested and many of its violent forms, such as raiding and destruction of buildings and crops, could be found in activities not officially classed as war.
for unity. By contrast, in 1997–2001 an increasingly apathetic public seemed not to care very much whether the parliamentary party was united or not. Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart examine the Conservative performance at Westminster during these years. There were frequent rebellions against the official party line, but – with the exception of some major revolts on devolution – the dissidents were usually few. Meanwhile, a small number of backbenchers (dubbed ‘the awkward squad’) who were unhappy about the tactics employed by their leaders, engaged in a parliamentary
experienced and interpreted. Here local issues, such as histories of migration and resistance, and national contexts, such as debates about devolution and the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum, impact on reactions to anti-immigration campaigns. Whereas in Ealing and Hounslow (West London), for example, the Go Home van's appearance played into divisive discourses of respectability among established migrants and British citizens (discussed in
English Literature: [Only] two months before the election which brought to power a British government committed to devolution and the most significant Norquay_01_Intro 2 22/3/02, 9:30 am 3 Introduction constitutional changes to the British nation for three centuries, Homi Bhabha with the British Council presented a major conference-cumfestival called Reinventing Britain. Incredibly, the project contained nothing whatsoever about the devolution debate, or how the changing relationships between Scotland, England, Wales, not to mention Ireland, might contribute to
government. Such modifications are, in the United States the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, in France the end of the prefectoral tutelle, and in the United Kingdom the devolution of powers in the late 1990s to the Scots Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. While it is easy to say that understanding the present is helped by a knowledge of the past, in practice things are far more complicated. This is because historians do not and (more to the point) cannot agree on the past; when presenting HISTORY 71 their narratives they impose their own versions of
presume that with the devolution of power to a Scottish parliament and the clear possibility of independence, such attitudes no longer exist. But attitudes can lag behind political reality and from an attitudinal point of view the unthinkability of Scottish culture within a British context is alive and well. One question that must be considered is, how does one think about the unthinkable? Out of this paradox are born the stereotypes already referred to. The model of ‘Scotland as unthinkable’ is easy to find even in writing relating to contemporary art. An illuminating
devolution in Northern Ireland and the formation of a power-sharing executive will help usher in a more inclusive political culture that will dilute ethnonationalist forces.4 The aim of the Belfast Agreement (BA) is to draw together atavistic political groups in order to promote a consociational accord, which would endorse Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom but at the same time uphold minority rights and cultural demands.5 It is evident, however, that the return of a devolved administration has not resolved the long-term political future of Northern Ireland
to have a state of their own. Once this was achieved, war, arising from frustrated national identities, would become a thing of the past. The reality has often been the creation of states that are either too small to be viable economic and political units, or themselves contain disgruntled national minorities that demand further devolution of power, thus weakening the ability of the government to
constitutional reform agenda that includes devolution, the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, reform of the House of Lords and the introduction of proportional representation for ‘second-order’ elections. The Thatcher and Major governments brought about radical changes in the British state. Privatisation and the creation of new regulatory bodies; the Next Steps reforms of the civil service; marketisation and the New Public Conclusions 259 Management, and the creation of a plethora of quangos transformed a hierarchical system of